Oct 16 The GOP Gets Nothing (Open Thread)

This morning (afternoon if you are out east), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced GOP's full surrender: the deal reached between them raises the debt limit till February 7, extends government funding until January 15, mandates a House-Senate conference on the budget to conclude by December 13, and requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to sign off on income verification for those getting subsidies through the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

You could call all of them GOP concessions and a victory for common sense government. Democrats have been asking for a budget conference for over six months now; they get that. Democrats and the president have laid out a principle that government by extortion not be allowed, and the Republicans have completely capitulated on that. Income verification is already part of the ACA, and is hardly alters anything.

The chatter is that Speaker Boehner will hold a vote on the Senate proposal, and that the vast majority of the votes will have to come from Democrats. And even Ted Cruz has backed off from slowing this thing down in the Senate. (Update at 1 pm PT: ... and Boehner has explicitly agreed to cave).

So, the GOP gets nothing. We could have done all this a fortnight ago, a month ago, and avoided the government shutdown. But apparently, Speaker Boehner had to save his job, and let's not lose perspective here, that's the most important thing... why again?

Enjoy your open thread. Let's follow the capitulation in close captioning.